For 30 years, Bobby Vinton would show up for concerts, sing his hit songs, collect his paycheck and head off to the next engagement.
But as a theater owner, he has new responsibilities that make singing look a whole lot easier by comparison."All of a sudden I'm worried about the popcorn machine, the air conditioning doesn't work, problems with the parking lot," Vinton said before a performance at his new Blue Velvet Theatre.
"I need 200 trees that I have to plant on the property. I mean, there are all kinds of demands which I never knew existed to a theater. I'm learning."
Vinton, 58, is anything but "Mr. Lonely" these days. Tour buses from cities such as Chicago and Pittsburgh are streaming into this booming Ozarks town to see the Polish Prince. He's teamed up with the Glenn Miller Orchestra to give a big-band twist to "Roses Are Red," "Blue Velvet" and his other signature hits.
The result has been sold-out shows that have audiences, who fondly recall the big band era and Vinton's days as a teen idol, tapping toes to bouncy polkas and sentimental ballads. They literally dance in the aisles.
Vinton, who's sold more than 25 million records in his career, says he seriously contemplated retiring until he played Branson for the first time last October.
"I knew after being here a week I wanted to come back," he said.
Like Andy Williams and Wayne Newton, fellow pop artists now past-prime but with devoted fans nonetheless who fill their theaters, Vinton concluded Branson wasn't just for country-music audiences anymore.
"People who come here want to see shows, they just want to be entertained," he said. "There is no musical label to Branson. It's just entertainment."
Vinton built a $7 million theater with the look of an old Hollywood movie house that is everything blue, from the exterior, carpet and drapes down to the fabric on its 1,300 seats.
He boasts that his theater is likely the only place in the world where a big band performs two shows a day.
"I'm putting the great big-band sound of the '40s together with the sounds of the '60s and '70s and making it fresh," he said.
Vinton's association with the Glenn Miller Orchestra marks a return to his roots in big band music. As a teenager in Pennsylvania, he formed and led an orchestra to pay for a music education degree at Duquesne University in Pitts-burgh.
"I made two big band albums, but they didn't sell and the record company threatened to drop me," he said. "They said there's no need for big bands anymore, everybody wants teenage idols."
So he started singing and became one.
"Luckily I fell into `Roses Are Red' and a lot of country-type songs that the public seemed to want to hear. That's kind of what I've done all my life," he said.
Like other entertainers who have opened theaters in Branson, Vinton is moving here lock, stock and barrel, selling his ranch in Malibu, Calif., and home in Sarasota, Fla.
Vinton involves his family in his show. Daughters Kristin and Jennifer sing backup vocals and son Chris manages the theater. He even had his 84-year-old mother, Dorothy, get the audience moving to "In the Mood."
"People want to get up and dance to the Glenn Miller Orchestra so we put on the lights and say, `Hey, we know some of you are dying, so let's get up and dance and my mother will lead you off,' " Vinton said.
In England last year, a rerelease of "Blue Velvet," which was a hit for Vinton in 1963, sailed to the top of the charts. Vinton said he was shocked to see young toughs standing on a London street corner listening to "Blue Velvet" on a boom box.
"I said, `You guys really like that song?' They said, `Yeah, what's wrong with that song? When we dance with our girls, we like that song.'
"It was a phenomenon. Anything can happen in the music business."